


Objectifying

by towards



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Emotional Abuse, Mental Abuse, Rule 63, Suicidal Thoughts, Suicide Attempt, possible pregnancy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-01
Updated: 2015-02-01
Packaged: 2018-03-09 23:27:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,682
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3268238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/towards/pseuds/towards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>drrr!! kinkmeme fill. darkfic. rule 63!shizuo/izaya.</p><p>Izaya doesn't love Shizuka. He views her as a monster, a beast to be trapped and caged. Impossible to tame, but easy to force into submission and isolate.  Eventually this gets to Shizuka as she hits rock bottom and looks for an out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Objectifying

**Author's Note:**

> i barely remember writing this and i have nO idea where i was going with it but enjoy?

Shizuka had always thought she'd be a better boy. Her hair was short, her clothes were manly, and her attitude was rarely referred to as anything but derogatory slurs. There was nothing sweet or feminine about the super humanly strong young woman. Men shied away from her, girls abhorred her for simply going against everything they tried so hard to represent - and so, Heiwajima Shizuka simply decided that she would go about life as a man.

It was easy until puberty. No one questioned the scrappy, somewhat effeminate child who introduced them self as "Heiwajima Shizuo", nor did they think anything of the baggy shirts and loose fitting pants. They didn't really care about the gender, they were more concerned about the fact that the child was perpetually covered in bandages. People left her alone when they thought she was a boy - even if boys fought more, they were rare to go out their way to pick on them as they often did to girls.

Her mother had once said that boys pick on girls they like. By becoming a boy, she had eliminated one of the most annoying parts of childhood, and saved herself from most of the heartache that would inevitably come.

However, when her flat body began to develop curves, Shizuka could no longer conceal her identity. Perhaps if she had been flat chested, as she so desired, she wouldn't have had any problem. But binding did nothing. She tried, but even so, people spotted her for what she was. After a while she gave up, began signing her tests with the name she had been given, but never the less stuck to her guns and continued to wear the boys uniform and cut her hair short.

And after meeting Tanaka Tom, began bleaching it.

In the end, she must have managed to look like a delinquent. People stayed away from her for more than just her frightening temper and hard fists, they avoided her because she was a freak.

But even some people enjoy freaks.

The first time he saw her, he was hard. Shizuka had noticed this before she had even seen his face. It was obvious, he made no effort to hide it - the wide, predatory grin and the bulge in his pants caused her vision to blur red and her head to pound with rage. He was applauding her. Applauding the destruction she had caused.

She hated him on sight.

She couldn't even say how it had first begun. After a long chase, Izaya had simply stopped dead. Victory seemed certain. The weight of the vending machine was nothing compared to her hate! Body tensed, weight properly distributed, the almost projectile was ready to fly out of her hands--

and then his mouth was on hers. The machine crashed behind them. His hands were under her shirt, his body between her legs. Shizuka didn't remember if she kissed back, or when her pants had been torn off and he was moving inside at a fast and furious rhythm that had left her crying. All she knew is that at the end of it, his back was raw and bloody from her nails and she could feel the evidence of their coupling sliding down her legs.

He hadn't even worn a condom. 

It happened like that from then on. Eventually, everyone had come to think of them as "dating". They saw his hands on her breasts as normal, their fights as nothing more than lovers spats. If they heard moans in alleys, they would move on with whispers of "that slut", and "with that freak too!" 

In the end, they had no one. Whatever Izaya thought of as "love" fueled the passion he felt, but she often felt nothing but sick. Once or twice he had done something sweet, something gentle, that caught the girl completely off guard. And then it was gone, he was kissing her, shoving her legs apart and thrusting inside with some cool comment about how wet she was, how much she wanted this, or a reference to how hard he was and how fucking good it felt.

He would kiss her forehead in the end with his fingers locked in her hair, pulling. "Mine," he would say, and she would feel sick. "No one else will ever do this, Shizu-chan. No one else will ever look at you like I do."

Shizuka felt sick.

So sick.

Because he was right. 

This was as close to a normal life as she would get. When she had asked Kasuka for advice near the beginning, he had simply said to cherish every relationship she had. She was bad with people, and the people she had were valuable.

Perhaps that should have been when she had learned not to take every word her younger brother had so to heart.

He pulled her back against the bed. One arm stayed wrapped around her neck, the other harshly tugging her pajama pants and underwear off in one harsh move, a sarcastic "Boxers today, Shizu-chan?" whispered into her hair before they're tossed aside and his fingers are stroking her. She bit her lip hard, arching back against him as he scraped his nails over her thighs. There's no space between them now, practically one without anything entering.

He threw her down on the bed. His lips stole any demands that he use protection "for fucking once" and he has his legs spread so far apart it hurts. He's in without preparation, her teeth are sinking into his nose - and they're blanking out on rational thought as they fight and fuck all in one.

Izaya came with a demented fucking laugh, ahh, shizu-chan! He mocked with that voice. In the end she was biting her hand and trying not to think of how many times he made her body react and how spent she is from their brutal union. She hated herself for how damn good it made her feel, and she hated herself even more for knowing that she was the one who kept coming.

He had a hold on her. 

He kissed her forehead as he always did. Like he always did, his hands were in her hair, harshly pulling as he licks away her salty sweat and tears. He was still inside, softening, as he did this. He never pulled out until he was good and ready. 

"Fucking louse," she grunted, using shaking arms to push him back. 

Sleeping with someone you hate for so long... How wrong was that? Knowing that if she was ever with someone else, he would do something. He wrecked everything that wasn't about him - destroyed everything that wasn't about him and his fucking plans. 

He didn't move.

After seven years of this, she was tired. Grunting again, her arms fell to her sides and those flat amber eyes turn away and focus on the far wall. His hands fell to her hips, giving one, last, brutal thrust, and then he pulled himself out and hopped away to shower. Whatever Izaya wanted from him, it wasn't what she wanted to give. 

It may have not seemed like a bad thing to some. She had heard that other, normal girls did 'booty calls'. Sex for the sake of sex - but this was more than that. It was violence, tinged with pleasure. It was an unhealthy cycle that she could never escape from. Izaya controlled her life from afar. Even if not everything was his doing, it felt like it. She was suffocating - and she wished she had been born a normal girl, or a man. She wished that she was something that would have never caught his attention like this. Hatred alone would have been manageable, but this violent, obsessive cycle of twisted affection and desire was tearing her apart.

Shizuka pulled the sheets around her and leaned over the edge of the bed, retrieving her pajamas and grabbed her jacket from the side. A moment of fumbling produced a cigarette - an unhealthy addiction she'd picked up from Tom, a means of stress relief, and grabbed the lighter from the bedside table.

It took three strikes to get it going, and even then, the flames only reached pathetically for the paper with dying hands. Those pathetic, reaching hands only managed to blacken the white. Once the edges were ruined with the pathetic attempts, the flames faded. She flicked the catch again. Once. Twice. Three times, before she let it lay flatly against her palm. 

Staring at the burnt edges of her smoke and holding the spent lighter in her hands, the bodyguard contemplated suicide.

At twenty-three, the longest Shizuka had ever held down a job was six months. The longest she'd managed to live in one apartment was barely over five. Finding a place to live was never hard, though. Izaya was always able to scrounge up a new, dirty hovel desperately for a tenant - she was sure that his "acts of charity" were an attempt to convince her that she should live with him. She was also certain that the reason her temper flared and her home was destroyed time and time again was because of his schemes. If he had just butted out, left her alone, there would be no problems. She would live a normal, peaceful life without him.

She hated needing to stay with him in between apartments.

"I wonder if people realize that Shizu-chan doesn't stuff?" He mumbled against the back of her neck when she slid onto the side of the bed that had been unofficially been declared hers. His lips moved seamlessly against her skin, his hips rolling against her ass with intention. She rolled her eyes as his hands slipped under her shirt, biting her lower lip when they tweaked a nipple. "Shizu~chan~," he whispered, softer now. She could feel him hardening already. "It's been so long since the last time... Don't you have needs like a normal woman?" 

Those hands moved lower, stroking her stomach softly. Her eyes squeezed shut, focusing on keeping her breathing normal. This was just like their physical fights - it was all about not giving the other the satisfaction of seeing you bleed. It was always rough, this fucking. It was always brutal and it would have left a normal girl walking oddly for a week. They would bite and scratch and bleed on each other, break apart and catch their breath, and then they were at it again. Nothing about it could be called "making love". Even sex seemed like the wrong word. Sex implied procreation, but everything that went on between them was destruction.

If that first time had never happened, she would never have realized what she was missing. 

"I bet you're already aching," he purred, tongue darting out to lick her ear. Her reaction was instinctive, elbow snapping back to drive into his chest. "Don't be like that! There's only one reason you ever come to me, Shizu-chan! And if you didn't want it you would be sleeping on my couch! Or, maybe visiting your brother."

He listened to her silence. And then he was laughing.

"Or, does Shizu-chan think about her brother like tha--" Her fist cut him off. The force behind it knocked him off of the bed, bashing him into the wall... but still, he laughed.

"Sicko," she hissed softly, throwing her legs off of the side of the bed, standing up to her full height. Despite being female she was still taller than him, a fact that he never failed to appreciate. Heavier, too - but that was because Izaya never seemed to eat normal meals, and Shizuka was all muscle and strength.

"But he can't have you, you know," Izaya continued, and through the dark she could feel his eyes on her. Admiring the curves he couldn't seem. She heard the soft rustling of fabric and the squeak of the bed, and he was back behind her, his body pressed tightly against hers.

His arms looped around her neck, long fingers coming up to stroke her jaw line and circle her throat. Those skinny hips snapped against her back and she bites back a groan as she felt that hardness. It didn't take much. Not with him.

Things like this made her sick. It made her hate him all the more, that he could do these things and get these reactions... and he hated her, because she never submitted to his so called charm and affection. There was no love, nothing other than Izaya's obsession with her strength and his need to control and crush the life out of anything that could grant him whatever twisted dreams he had.

e pulled her back against the bed. One arm stayed wrapped around her neck, the other harshly tugging her pajama pants and underwear off in one harsh move, a sarcastic "Boxers today, Shizu-chan?" whispered into her hair before they're tossed aside and his fingers are stroking her. She bit her lip hard, arching back against him as he scraped his nails over her thighs. There's no space between them now, practically one without anything entering.

He threw her down on the bed. His lips stole any demands that he use protection "for fucking once" and he has his legs spread so far apart it hurts. He's in without preparation, her teeth are sinking into his nose - and they're blanking out on rational thought as they fight and fuck all in one.

Izaya came with a demented fucking laugh, ahh, shizu-chan! He mocked with that voice. In the end she was biting her hand and trying not to think of how many times he made her body react and how spent she is from their brutal union. She hated herself for how damn good it made her feel, and she hated herself even more for knowing that she was the one who kept coming.

He had a hold on her. 

He kissed her forehead as he always did. Like he always did, his hands were in her hair, harshly pulling as he licks away her salty sweat and tears. He was still inside, softening, as he did this. He never pulled out until he was good and ready. 

"Fucking louse," she grunted, using shaking arms to push him back. 

Sleeping with someone you hate for so long... How wrong was that? Knowing that if she was ever with someone else, he would do something. He wrecked everything that wasn't about him - destroyed everything that wasn't about him and his fucking plans. 

He didn't move.

After seven years of this, she was tired. Grunting again, her arms fell to her sides and those flat amber eyes turn away and focus on the far wall. His hands fell to her hips, giving one, last, brutal thrust, and then he pulled himself out and hopped away to shower. Whatever Izaya wanted from him, it wasn't what she wanted to give. 

It may have not seemed like a bad thing to some. She had heard that other, normal girls did 'booty calls'. Sex for the sake of sex - but this was more than that. It was violence, tinged with pleasure. It was an unhealthy cycle that she could never escape from. Izaya controlled her life from afar. Even if not everything was his doing, it felt like it. She was suffocating - and she wished she had been born a normal girl, or a man. She wished that she was something that would have never caught his attention like this. Hatred alone would have been manageable, but this violent, obsessive cycle of twisted affection and desire was tearing her apart.

Shizuka pulled the sheets around her and leaned over the edge of the bed, retrieving her pajamas and grabbed her jacket from the side. A moment of fumbling produced a cigarette - an unhealthy addiction she'd picked up from Tom, a means of stress relief, and grabbed the lighter from the bedside table. It took three strikes to get it going, and even then, the flames only reached pathetically for the paper with dying hands. Once it had caught, the flames faded. She flicked the catch. Once. Twice. Three times, before she let it lay flatly against her palm. 

Staring at the burnt edges of her smoke and holding the spent lighter in her hands, the bodyguard contemplated suicide.

In the following weeks the thought had begun to consume her. She'd managed to leave Izaya's apartment and, for the sixth time in her life, settled into a dirty hovel of a place and began her life anew. Were it not for the fact that Tom had found her that day and given her a job, she probably wouldn't have been able to afford even this. 

He ruffled her hair affectionately that morning when they went to work, an older brother caring for a younger sister - she would have it no other way. When they stopped for lunch he'd picked up on something being wrong, and for the first time in years, she lied. She said she was just pissed off about something Izaya had done. It had it's intended effect. Tom ended the conversation there in favour of the building they were staying in remaining in one piece.

He took her melancholy expression as something relating to "a lover's spat" and left it at that. She knew, though he said nothing and simply changed the topic to something more suitable for this sort of place. But even as she was punching the next client across the room for staining the bartender uniform she wore with one grimy hand, she was lost in thought.

The things that killed normal people would probably have had no effect on her. Drugs had never had much of an impact - when she had been younger, before she had grown completely immune to agony, painkillers and anesthesia had never quite worked out the way doctors had expected. Even large doses were burned off horrendously quick... it was no wonder that she didn't really notice when she was stabbed or broke a toe now, since she'd had to endure so much without it.

She doubted her neck would break right if she tried to hang herself. The possibility of being alive but becoming paralyzed sickened her, because then she knew where she would end up. In Izaya's care, under his thumb for the rest of her miserable life... she couldn't live like that.

In the midst of these terrible thoughts she had considered running away. But Izaya's information network was too vast. Escaping wouldn't do her much - he would find her, and he would use his connections to make her life a living hell. The bastard had threatened to pin murder on her once, he'd even been prepared to kill one of her victims in the hospital.

That left few options.

"If I fell from up here... would I die?" The soft words were lost amongst the howl of the wind. Shizuka held the railing in her hands, debating. The building was high, higher than any distance she'd ever fallen before - and if she was going to fall then she had to make sure that she landed in a way that would kill her.

Those flat, lightless amber eyes swept over the cityscape. Looking for a reason not to let go. 

She wanted to die. 

Slowly, the woman stepped over the railing, wondering if anyone ever noticed how flimsy it actually was. No one notice, few people came up to here, after all... it wasn't a very popular place, except for people like her who wanted to die and make sure that they definitely died.

The wind whipped her hair back from her eyes, letting her see just how high up she really was. Her fingers flexed against the railing, inhaling deeply to regain her strength.

This was fear.

This was true fear. 

"... Someone else is up here?" The voice startled her. The railing in her hands moaned under the pressure. The rusted parts cracked... yet Shizuka failed to move. She stared down at her fate, unmoving, simply wondering if the thoughts going through her head were the same as the thoughts other people had.

"... Hey."

The voice wasn't really alarmed. There was a stern note in it,, cautionary - a definite get down from there. She heard footsteps, slow, careful. As if she would leap at their presence - as if they could fight her off if this is what she really wanted to do. Whoever it was stood at least three feet away. Their hands were probably up... ah, she could laugh if it didn't piss her off so much. Like something out of a movie.

"Heiwajima Shizuka?"

... ?

The woman turned slowly, leaning her weight more against the rail rather than further over the edge. The man had the same sort of air that Tom did - calm, authorative - but this was different. He was older, older than her, older than Tom. His clothes were far more refined than either of them cared to think about, and his demeanor spoke of a calm, confident man. His hands were in his pockets... but his eyes betrayed the uncertainty he felt about seeing her up here. The Beast of Ikebukuro would never do something like this, right? 

"Come any closer, I'll kill you," she said coldly, voice rising above the wind. 

"Then I'll stay where I am," the man replied. 

Shizuka shrugged. "Suit yourself," her voice betrayed none of the unease. Her gaze swept back to the drop. 

A moment of silence passed. Shizuka let her head roll forward, wondering if perhaps at her core, she was just as cowardly as Izaya.

 

"Do you think I would die?" 

"Eh?"

"If I fell from here, do you think I would die?"

Silence.

"I can lift cars and kick motorbikes. I've broken every bone in my body and healed," she went on, clenching the railing behind her. It groaned again, sagging forward. "But something like this... If my body can do things that normal people's can't 'cause I want it to, could I make it die like a normal body if I fell?" She let the thought hang in the air, then gave a short laugh. "Or would I want to live so badly that I would make a crater in the pavement."

"Do you want to die, Shizuka?" The man asked. He wasn't prying, he just sounded curious - she wondered if she should have recognized him, but it was far too dark to make an accurate assumption about his identity.

"... Why else would I be up here?" Izaya's hands on her body. His tongue in her mouth. His hips against hers. That sick feeling rose again, that ugly feeling of self loathing and worthlessness choking rational thought from her brain. 

"Get down and we'll talk," the man offered. For once she didn't know if there was that ulterior motive... or she thought she did. He didn't sound particularly demanding or threatening... and there was a reassuring 'or don't' in there. He didn't care if she lived or died. It really wouldn't benefit him one way or the other.

Her glasses slipped off of her nose and tumbled to the ground. She lost sight of them as they plummeted into the darkness.

Ten minutes later, the shattered remains of her sunglasses crunched under Shiki's boot. The man glanced down at the fragments of glass and plastic, letting his eyes slowly rise to the top of the building once more. If anyone had jumped from that height they surely would have died...

He heard the click of Shizuka's flat shoes a few moments later.

The woman had no idea who he was. That much had been made painfully apparent when he'd managed to get her down from the railing and had to endure that confused stare for several moments. Perhaps he had addressed her too familiarly? It was entirely possible that she just wasn't used to people responding to her in a positive fashion, given her reputation and the fear she struck into the hearts of even normal people.

He had met her for the first time when he was visiting Izaya for information. She had stormed out of the bedroom connected to the office wearing not much more than the bedsheet and a pair of ripped panties. She hadn't even noticed him, her attention was entirely on Izaya and her rage was unfathomable. 

The next thing he had known, Izaya was encouraging him to leave and dodging the chunks of wall his supposed girlfriend was flinging at him. 

He couldn't imagine why a girl full of that much life would try to kill herself. 

Then again, he was having a hard time placing the woman who followed behind him now, with downcast, lightless eyes as the same girl who had been screaming about killing his information dealer. Shizuka was taller than your average girl and he'd once watched her strut through the streets of Ikebukuro as if she was a man... what had happened to make her steps so uncertain?

The only thing he knew was that asking if she wanted him to call Izaya had resulted in her nearly going back over that edge. 

He could either put the girl back home and run the risk of hearing her name on the news as a suicide, or he could take her somewhere safer... and that was not to Izaya. Whatever had driven the life out of her was certainly the fault of the sneaky young man... good at his job, but slimy and slick, like a worm. 

"You can stay at my place, Miss Shizuka," Shiki said after a moment. "If you'd like, we can stop somewhere to order food now and I'll have someone pick it up for us when it's ready."

"Ah."

"Is there anywhere you would like to eat?"

"Not really."

"Then let's visit my favorite place. It's not far from here. It's relatively unknown and a little expensive, but well worth every penny," Shiki paused, looking over at her again. Her posture had changed again, tensing slightly - a sign of agitation? ... Ah, she probably didn't have much money. "It's on me."

She relaxed at that. Though her tone was nonchalant, he could see the relief on her face in the dim city lights. And - a smile? "Alright."

... Beautiful. 

Less so later on, seated at his dining room table and checking over the bill from the restaurant. Could she really eat that much, or was she just trying to make some sort of point? The young woman sat slumped in her seat, drumming her fingers over the tabletop. He cold see tiny dents forming in it from the pressure.

"I don't want to talk about it," she said flatly before he could question it. But the slight shift in her posture, the hunch to her shoulders - that betrayed it all. A total stranger she could open up with, someone who wouldn't be burdened by the knowledge of what she would tell them if she did indeed choose to jump or kill herself in some other form. Shiki wouldn't lament the loss of her life like the people close to her would.

"Alright." He just had to wait.

Twenty minutes later, the young woman ran her fingers through her hair and leaned back in her chair. Her hands slid down the back of her head, around her neck, then up to cover her face. "... Everything about him fucking pisses me off."

There was no need for clarification. There never was when it came to Shizuka and her unconventional relationship with Orihara Izaya. Anytime the woman screamed in the streets it could be linked to the man. Anytime that soft voice rose in anger or ecstasy, Orihara Izaya could be linked as the cause without needing to be seen. 

"The bastard..." Her voice quivered. For a moment, he thought she might cry. Ikebukuro's Strongest collapsing into sobs... it was hard to wrap his head around. 

However, any further notion of that was immediately banished from his mind as one powerful fist slammed into his table, spiderweb cracks splintering through the woods. The legs groaned and quivered, trembling under the force of that fist. "That fucking flea has ruined my life since the day we met!"

The other hand shielded her eyes from view. The veins in the back of her hands were protruding. A slight shift of her hand and she could gouge her own eyes out, he was sure. Her teeth clenched, grinding hard. The hand on the table was digging trenches in the surface of the wood as those slender fingers curled inward. 

What was more alarming than that display of strength was the sudden display of apathy afterward. Her moodswings... he'd heard about them before, how violent they could be... but this was certainly different.

Intriguing... but not in a way that Shiki liked. He was certain that Izaya found this side of his "girlfriend" to be quite attractive. Her blank, empty eyes and the lost expression on her face must have given him pleasure beyond pleasure.

The doorbell rang.... His men had arrived with the food. Twenty minutes late.

"Ahh... I'm sorry, Miss Shizuka. I'll be right back." He stood, offering the woman a serene smile as he made his way to the door.

The conversation halted as they ate. 

Or, more accurately, a surprisingly comfortable silence settled over the room as Shiki ate and Shizuka pushed her food around her plate. It was discourteous to refuse a gift - Kasuka had often scolded her when she'd tossed presents from people who had admired her into the trash - and as she wasn't often treated to things like this, she really should be enjoying it.

However, barely over an hour ago she had resigned herself to death. Food wasn't interesting to her at all, even if this was clearly expensive and something meant to encourage her against that way of thinking... yet, it stirred another thought she couldn't quite shake - this could almost be a date.

Her sharp, barking laugh at the mere thought of that startled the man across from her. 

"Your food will get cold, Miss Shizuka," he said after a moment, offering her that pleasant smile. Her stony reaction didn't phase him at all... and that was enough to have her at least try to eat.

The blonde gently brushed her fingers through her hair, picking up her chopsticks in her free hand. She hated using these. The wood splintered between her fingers at even the softest of clicks. Forks were easier, but... she felt like asking for something like that when presented with a meal like this would be awkward. 

She endured. Eating three pieces of sushi before shattering the utensils between her fingers.

Her host calmly finished eating. 

The silence became awkward without the clattering of plates to fill it. Her golden eyes swung to the clock - they'd been here for nearly two hours.

"Miss Shizuka..." Shiki said softly after a few moments. He was studying her - not like Izaya, not like Shinra - something about it was different. "Will you tell me why you were up on that building?"

Her eyebrow twitched. "I'd rather know why you were," the menace in her tone was effectively ruined as she paused, fumbling for his name. "Shiki-san." 

"Business." 

"Shady business, if you ask me."

"Some call it that."

"..."

Shizuka glanced around the room with a new light. "So, it's like that..." A bitter smile slowly crept across her face, teeth baring in a nasty sort of smile. "Was it Izaya? Did he figure it out? I found it hard to believe that the fucking flea wouldn't notice, he picks shit like that out of people all of the time."

"I'm not fond enough of Orihara Izaya to do him any favors, Miss Shizuka."

"..."

"My dealings may involve less than reputable people, but I can assure you that I feel no obligation to lower myself to their level." Shiki sighed softly. "... I would count that man among one of the worst I've ever encountered." 

He didn't look like he was lying. 

The girl scratched the side of her face awkwardly.

"I told you why I was up there," the blonde ran her fingers through her hair, not minding as it stuck up awkwardly in the wake of her hand. "I was gonna jump."

"Why?" 

"... Why? Why what?" 

"I'm sorry. I just never quite pegged you as suicidal," Shiki stood slowly, gathering his plates. "I've seen you tear through Ikebukuro so many times. It's difficult to imagine a world where that doesn't happen... or what would change your mind so much."

Surprisingly, she wasn't angry. If anything, she just looked as if she was contemplating his words. 

"... I'm sick of it," the blonde said after a long moment. "Izaya, the shit he puts me through. Feeling... trapped and stuff." A pause. Then, she laughed. "He's probably already combing all of fucking 'Bukuro for me... shit, maybe the whole country.

"With a "friend" like that, I don't fucking need enemies. He's two in one." Those full lips drew into a thin line. "... I should've just jumped."

Men often said "more than a handful is a waste" to reassure their girlfriends. In some cases, it was true! Men were greedy things and didn't like it when there were parts of their woman they couldn't touch - but Orihara Izaya could safely say that he didn't consider that to be the case in his "relationship".

Flat women were boring after he'd had Shizu-chan's curvaceous body. The small breasts that he could easily cover with his hands weren't enough after he'd done such perverted things with Shizuka's rather impressive chest... and his bed was too vast without her stretched out on the other side in her usually unladylike way. 

Izaya couldn't understand why the woman wouldn't just move in. He owned her - knew everything about her, controlled nearly every aspect of her life! Her apartment was dirty and rat infested, just as every one before it was, and she'd gotten sick twice from living in conditions like that. Perhaps if she learned to stop being stubborn and just fell into line like a good girlfriend should, he wouldn't need to deal with the frustration came with trying to control Ikebukuro's most unreasonable person.

But she wouldn't. She never did anything he wanted. 

Not even the reason he'd bedded her in the first place.

But that wasn't important now. Whatever reasoning he had for trapping her beneath him that first time didn't matter. His beloved monster had been missing for nearly two days, after giving away an important possession and calling her brother for the first time in six months. 

Perhaps she had killed herself. Overdosed on drugs? Drowned herself? She couldn't do it by conventional means - knives wouldn't slice her skin and she'd never try hanging herself. If she did, she would have done it somewhere obvious and pathetic... and she hated guns and would never use something like that on herself.

Still. It left him agitated. 

He'd noticed the difference in her attitude. Her anger came slower now, often tinged with a bitter look that had suggested something inside had finally snapped. He hadn't considered that Shizuka might have snapped like that - he'd expected her broken spirit, he'd been trying for it, but to go to such an extreme?

"... Where did you go, Shizu-chan?" It wasn't concern that laced that the man's voice. Annoyance. Possessiveness. 

He liked nothing about that personality. She was beautiful, she was interesting enough to watch, she was his - and that strength... he had plans for that strength, for tests of her false humanity!

The man rocked back and forth in his chair, spinning around.

The ding of an instant message caught his attention.

Twenty minutes later, Izaya gently shut the computer. For one long, frozen moment, he grit his teeth and clenched his fists. That slender body doubled over, teeth bared in a hideous expression that belied none of the true fury he felt over such an accusaion-

and then a cold, mirthless laugh bubbled forth form his lips.

"So that's how it is..."

Slowly, slender fingers wound around his sides. The informant's laugh grew louder, louder, losing any semblance of sarcasm and sanity as the sound went on and on and on

"... As if!"

\--- 

The moment Tom had found his bodyguard's apartment open, empty, and unlocked, Pandora's Box had been opened. When more information had slipped out - the objects she'd given out to people, the quite apology that had been left in her bedroom, only half-written and covered by a sheaf of loose papers.

Rumors were already flowing through the streets of Ikebukuro. Rational thought was swept away in the tide, gangs began to stir once more when the idea that Heiwajima Shizuka had fallen from the top of a building or drowned herself in the tub of a motel. Details "police accounts" of people finding her body were cropping up on forums, being submitted to the news, filling the inboxes of people on mailing lists.

"-she had slit her wrists and driven a knife into her own throat. She was naked from head to toe. She--"

It was disgusting.

Shiki's eyes narrowed as he listened to the man who had decided to start reading what he considered to be the "real" account of the suicide. He'd read that one - some twisted guro fetishized version of events that had never happened. 

The proof of that was sleeping upstairs, in an apartment which was now void of even the lightest of asprins and the sharp replica swords he had once kept there. He wasn't sure what the woman could and would do to herself if given half a chance.

The yazuka head wasn't sure what to do. Quite honestly, he wasn't sure if the young woman would survie if he turned her back out on the streets... she seemed calm enough once he'd offered the guest bedroom to her, and in the days that had followed the building incident she hadn't even said a word about what had happened, other than the occasional offhanded comment to herself about what could kill her.

What stunned him more than that was how... normal she was, underneath the hairtrigger temper. Shizuka did the dishes after that conversation, she made breakfast (burned it and set off the fire alarms, actually - her look had been genuinely apologetic, though she had blamed the heat of his stove offhandedly for her mistake) and he simply hadn't known what to say. 

"- Heiwajima Shizuka was DOA."

"Has anyone who knew her said anythinn? Ah, like the boss?"

"From what I hear, that guy, Tanaka? She gave him some treasured possession and took off one day. The apartment was wide open."

"Maybe murder?"

"Who could murder a Beast like that? I heard once that she took out an entire gang because one of them addressed her too casually! Unless they were freakishly strong like she is, there's no way they could have killed her."

"Has anyone emailed that informant who was fucking her to see if it's true?"

"They must have. Look at all of this! There'd be more arguments for her being alive if Orihara had said that she was alive."

Shiki shifted slightly in his chair, glancing over at the two men so enthralled in this discussion. "The informant and the woman," he said slowly, closing the lid to his computer. "How long were they together?"

"... That would be, seven years, I think?"

He filed that away. "Hasn't she tried to kill him before?"

"Nearly every day."

"Then why were they together?" 

The man tilted his head. "Well... That Shizuka is pretty, but she's got something wrong with her." A slight pause. "And Orihara Izaya isn't the type of person women like. I imagine they were together because they had no other choice. A couple've freaks-"

"That's enough."

"... Yes, sir."

One of the other men stirred slightly. "I heard another rumor," he said softly, looking around a tad warily. "About why it happened on Orihara's part, that is."

"Go on."

"... Well, Orihara has that freak thing about loving all humanity, right? I heard someone say once that he was screwing that Shizuka because he couldn't pick just one person for..."

"For?"

"... Uh, well. You know. To... Have his kid."

Shiki's fingers clenched a little tighter.

The man rubbed the sideof his face, looking awkward. "... I heard that same person say that he considered it sinful... 'like bestiality'. Then he laughed and said 'but even Gods have needs, and no one is on a God's level, so it's alright to touch a monster like Shizu-chan for something like that!'" He swallowed hard. "He quoted some ancient myth after that..."

It was an fact of life - everyone had to die sometime. Maybe it was today, or tomorrow, or you could be the lucky bastard who kicked it sixty years from now, surrounded by friends and family in a warm, safe place.

Shizuka knew that the latter simply wasn't for her.

If she survived for sixty years, that would be it. There would be no children. No husband. No grandchildren. Perhaps Kasuka and his girlfriend might have had children by then, but she wouldn't want to burden her brother with the task of watching as her body finally ran itself down. A body like this would certainly be the death of her.

She didn't hear the door open and shut, nor Shiki's voice - lost in the cacaphony that was the anime on television - and barely lifted her head up when his shadow finally fell through the doorframe. 

She remembered to tug her skirt down only after the bag had been set on the table. A heat spread across her cheeks, eyes averting and falling to the floor. 

"Are you doing better, Shizuka-san?" His voice was even, soft, and yet still managed to carry that sort of authority. She tilted her head up, lips twisting into a frown. 

"Better?" 

"Are you feeling well enough to eat?"

"Yeah."

The blonde sat up slowly, careful to keep herself decent. Her limited social circle usually didn't mind whenever the short skirt rode up. Izaya usually sliced it off, when he was feeling particularly bold and willing to take a punch to the face.

She scratched the side of her face. Talking with someone like Shiki was difficult. He was well spoken and even, and she tripped over her words - eventually, everything was bound to come out in an awkward mutter or a harsh snarl. The past few days with her here must have been trying on the poor man's company.

"Then let's eat."

ooooo

It's nearing eleven when Shiki finally felt confident enough to broach the topic that had been weighing on his mind all night. Shizuka sat across from him, legs crossed, chewing on a stick of gum since he'd politely forbid her to light up inside the house. 

"I heard something today," the yakuza head began, watching as those brown - golden? the light seems to change them - flick from the window to his face, dark eyebrows raising ever so slightly in question. "About Izaya." And down those eyebrows go, her upper lip curled in a snarl of distaste.

"Tell me, Shizuka... Are you pregnant?"

Let us paint a picture of how many assume a question like this would have gone. 

The expensive television, smashed through the glass table. Remnants of a cigarette searing into the expensive, plush carpeting as blood stains the white. The couch wedged halfway through the walls, the screams of terrified guards filling the air as they come upon the wreckage and see their boss, trapped under the wreckage of the dining room table, while the dangerous Shizuka Heiwajima springs from the balcony and lands unharmed stories below.

Shiki himself rather expected this. 

Which was why her laugh caught him off guard.

It must be said that Shizuka did not have a pretty laugh. It sounded masculine and awkward, like it wasn't used to coming through. It was boisterous and loud, tinged with a strange desperation, almost as if she attempted to hold it in something dire would happen... but her face simply lit up. Whatever half dead, sorrowful creature that had been sitting on his couch was immediately replaced with this bright eyed, exhuberant angel who filled the silence of the apartment with a sound of joy not often heard. Even if it wasn't a pretty laugh, she was pretty when she laughed. 

Yet, it alarmed him. It worried him how quickly this girl could careen from once extreme to the next. If she was pregnant, then that would explain everything.

"I'm not," she said after a moment, sobering up, trying to wipe away the smile from her face. As if, that face said. The very idea seemed absurd to her. "I've never been."

"You haven't?" He was pleased he managed to hide his surprise behind a mildly curious tone. "I just..."

"Never," she said, and struck a match. Shiki spared another look at that smile. He'd missed it before. Something dark lurked in there, something painful. A deeply hidden regret shadowed the curve of her lips, rue, perhaps even a hint of self loathing within that smile.

Shiki realized only once that registered that he had indeed dodged a bullet. He had just asked the strongest woman in all of Ikebukuro, if not the world, if she was carrying the bastard child of the man who had nearly driven her to suicide. 

"It's alright," she said after a minute, noticing his unease with a flat look. "My boss asked me that once. It's not... I don't think it's from a lack of trying on his part. I'm just not able to."

She inhaled deeply and that cigarette turned to ash.

"If I had been, I probably wouldn't have jumped... I haven't killed anyone before, I'm not about to start now." She glanced down at her flat, flat stomach, "I guess. He's never worn a condom, so it's definitely something with me."

There was something else in that expression.

Longing. 

... It was almost heartbreaking.


End file.
